And so we burn
by MegZ137
Summary: Imprisonment, explosions, and an argument - in other words a normal day for The Doctor and Amy.
1. Chapter 1

_A rewrite of an earlier story of mine with a much different take. This story takes place early in the relationship between the Doctor and Amy, sometime after the Beast Below but before Rory joins them. Hope you enjoy it!_

 _._

 _._

His voice is unusually serious, his eyes intent.

"Pond, this is serious," he says. "This is _not,_ repeat, not one of those times when you agree not to follow me and then immediately do so."

Amy smirks and immediately wipes it from her face, attempts a serious expression. He is not impressed.

"Really," he continues, getting marginally louder. "This planet is insanely dangerous, even for me. I just have to run off, nip something off a museum shelf while no one is… well, anyway, it won't take long and I'll be right back, but if you leave the TARDIS or set one foot on the surface of this planet, things will get extremely complicated. Humans are hunted here. They have… _complex_ defenses."

"Ok, boss," Amy assures him, her tone light. "Gotcha. Don't set a toe outside the door."

"Amy." he says slowly and clearly. Something in his tone wipes the last trace of a smile from her face. _He_ ** _is_** _serious,_ she realizes. "Promise me. You have to promise."

She pushes down the temptation to vamp or flirt or make fun. "I promise," she says solemnly, looking him right in the eye. "I won't go anywhere."

His eyes search hers for a moment and are apparently satisfied. "Good girl," he says, cracking a grin, and he is off at a loping run, leaving her fuming just a little at his parting tone. She looks around the TARDIS, trying to decide which room to rummage through. _While the doctor is away, the mouse will play._ She decides to begin in the study at the back of the library.

About forty minutes later, Amy is nose deep in a very interesting box of photos she has unearthed when the monitors begin to clamor and a large pink light begins to blink out in the corridors. She takes a moment to carefully reassemble the lid and place the box back where she found it – no use letting him know where she's been snooping, he'll just ferret it all away somewhere else and she'll be back at ground zero – before running out to the main control room. She flips a few levers she knows to be harmless, just to feel like she's doing something, and then glances up at the central monitor. Which is when things begin to get very strange indeed.

.

.

.

The Doctor tucks the artifact into one of the many inner pockets of his tweed jacket and spins lightly on the balls of his feet – straight into the waiting eye of a rather nasty looking gun, held in the claw of an even nastier-looking alien.

"Greetings, Doctor," it snarls, its tone guttural and strangely gleeful. "We have come to escort you to a meeting."

"Ah, well, thank you much for thinking of me, but I've no intention of going anywhere with you lot," the Doctor says, slowly sliding the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and readying it for stun.

"Wrong, Doctor," the alien replies. "I think you will." He holds out a small handheld device. There, centered nicely in the video screen, is Amy.

Amy Pond.

Who is most emphatically not in the TARDIS, and is, in fact, in the company of several alien soldiers. And appears to be tied to something. And looking rather frightened.

The doctor pushes down a groan and works unusually hard to keep his default, unperturbed face on display, while a slow, quiet burn begins inside.

"Fine," he says, holding out his wrists in surrender. "Let's go."


	2. Chapter 2

Amy hears his footsteps coming down the hall. Or rather she hears him being harried, rushed, and practically dragged along, and then the Doctor appears, lifted along by two of the larger creatures, who unceremoniously open the door of the cell and toss him inside. The Doctor stumbles but lands on his feet, brushes himself off, and sends a few choice words after his departing escorts.

"Doctor!" she cries out, without even thinking about it. "Thank god. Listen…"

He braces for a moment, turned away, then spins on his heels to face her, eyes glinting in a way that she does not like at all.

"Amelia Pond," he says, whipping out the sonic and heading her way with the grace of a panther. "Not at all where you're supposed to be, are you?"

"Wait," she says, "You have to stop, Doctor…" He is still advancing, just a few feet from her, and she decides this warrants full on shouting. "Doctor, FREEZE!"

He stops almost in mid-step, to her relief. He looks at her oddly, one elegant eyebrow arching up in disbelief.

"Oh please, elaborate," he drawls, arms crossed over his chest.

"I know you're angry," Amy says quickly, "But you need to listen. We have a more immediate problem."

"And that is?"

She takes a deep breath. "Take two steps back and put the sonic back in your pocket, and then I'll tell you." He glares for a moment, gobsmacked by her rudeness when he wanted to lecture, but in the end he does it. Whatever he's feeling, he knows her well enough to take her seriously at this moment, and Amy is immensely grateful.

"Ok, here's the thing. When they were tying me up," she says, words tumbling out too fast, "I was sort of half-conscious from being thumped on the head. I was playing it up a bit so they'd leave me alone, but I was also trying to watch what was happening. I don't think they realized. But the thing is, after they had me all tied to the chair, they took out a little silver bottle and sprayed all of the ropes."

"Sprayed them?" he asks, interest rising.

"Thoroughly. And one of them said something like 'let's see how the doctor likes that.' They all laughed." She stops to get her thoughts clear, because this is the part that matters. "I can only assume that it's something that's either going to incapacitate you if you touch it, or maybe hurt me. Except that so far I'm fine. So, I don't know, I was thinking that maybe it's going to interact with the sonic in some way. Because that would make sense in a way, no?"

He shakes his head. "The sonic seems unlikely."

"They know about the sonic. One of them had a replica, not exactly like yours but close enough." Amy insists. "Given how much they seem to know about you, don't you think it's odd that they let you keep it?"

That gives him pause.

She watches him for a moment, can almost see the wheels turning. She tamps down on the desperation she feels in her stomach about what his next words will be. He _has_ to believe her. She's never had quite such a bad feeling about a situation. Of course he'll believe her. He always does, right? But then again, she's never let him down quite this badly before.

"What they sprayed," he finally asks, "did it have a smell? Or a color?" His voice is much more conversational now, and Amy can tell he's tucked their larger confrontation away for another time.

Amy thinks for a minute. "Kind of like that smell before a rainstorm. And sort of like a window cleanser. I couldn't see the color, the bottle was silver."

"Hrm," he muses. "Ozone, and some other ingredients. Several possibilities but it's hard to be sure." He walks around her in a wide circle, eyeing her predicament. "The more pressing problem is that we need to get you out of this chair without me using the sonic or touching you." He digs around in his pockets, looking for something, comes out brandishing and absurdly small knife-like object. "You're going to have to do it yourself, Amy. Can you?"

She nods. "Of course I can."

He coaches her on how to position her hands so that she'll be able to reach the ropes, and he slowly, gingerly places the tiny knife – really more of a nail clipper – in her hands. It's small, he says, but razor sharp. She needs to be very, very careful. Then he steps away, keeping himself clear of her and the unknown substance.

She tries to be careful but it's not easy, sawing behind her back at ropes with a razor-bladed nail utensil, and she's wincing from a few cuts by the time one of the ropes begins to give way. He frowns intently from his perch across the room, clearly itching to be the one taking care of this.

"Amy, careful, you're hurting yourself!" he bursts out after one slip of the knife produces a mild obscenity.

"I _am_ being careful, you big numpty," she says lightly, trying to hide the damage as she slips her hands out and moves on to the ropes on each ankle, but she has to stop for a moment to literally lick her wounds, suck a line of blood away that's making things slippery. She resolutely avoids making eye contact with him as she does so, but she can see him from the corner of her eye, jiggling his legs in nervous irritation.

Untying her legs is faster work now that she can freely use her hands, and sooner than she'd expected she's stamping her feet to get some feeling in them and standing up.

"Ok," he says, all business. "Good. Now here's what I need you to do." He points to the far corner. "Take the chair over there, and pick up all the pieces of rope and put them on it. Get everything, even little pieces that shaved off when you were cutting."

Amy starts gathering, and in the meantime he lays a handkerchief and a roll of bandaging tape on the floor and backs away.

"Now take the handkerchief and brush off the cuffs of your pants and your wrists in the same pile. Rub thoroughly, even if it seems like there's nothing there. When you've finished, leave the cloth there too. And then you," he points again, this time to the opposite corner, "go sit over there and start binding up your cuts. Okay?"

"Got it," she says, following his instructions carefully. It's hard to be sure she's not leaving threads behind in the middle of the room, but she thinks she's gotten it all when she finally straightens up.

He waits until she's safely sequestered in the opposite corner, then walks to the middle of the room and points the sonic at the grim little pile in the far corner of the cell. "I'm going to sonic the rope and see what happens," he says. "Just to lay that particular theory at rest. I think it's really more likely to be some kind of neurotoxin aimed at me than a peculiar sonic-driven explosive devi-"

 _WHOOSH_

His words are cut off as he presses a button on the sonic and the chair is instantly engulfed in bright blue flames, burning at a heat Amy can feel even from her perch a good 15 meters away. The Doctor reels back, staring at it with morbid fascination. The chair literally disintegrates to ash before their eyes. It's hot enough that they're both coughing and Amy finds that she's jumped to her feet and backed into the bars behind her.

It dies down to a dull crackle after a minute or two, and then it's gone.

The only sound for several seconds is both of their ragged breathing.

"That – that would've been me," Amy says, softly at first and then louder. "That would've been me! Doctor, that…" She is surprised to find herself shaking.

He is on her in a moment, wrapping her in a hug. "Could've been," he says gently, "but it wasn't."

"What was it?" she asks.

"Kind of like your planet's napalm. Really hot-burning explosive designed to quickly devour organic matter." He looks sick just describing it, and she knows he's picturing what might have happened if he hadn't listened. If she'd been unconscious and unable to warn him. If she hadn't figured it out before he got there. She feels dizzy just running through the possibilities.

She isn't sure how she ends up sitting back on the bench, but when she returns to her senses he is squatted down in front of her, holding both of her hands, and peering into her face. She sees that his face is sooty, the streaks of dirt adding wrinkles to the corners of his eyes and deepening the worry lines on his forehead. It makes him look much, much older. His eyes, deep and brown, search hers intensely, and her breath catches in her throat a little.

"Whatever else we may say to each other today," he says softly with a wry smile, "hear this. Good job, you. You saved your own life, with almost no time to do it in, and with an angry Time Lord coming at you. That's not an easy place to stand."

She tries to smile back. "You're not so scary."

"Yes, I am," he counters quietly. He takes the bandages from her and finishes the job of wrapping the cut in the webbing of her left hand, and the gash across the knuckles in her right. Neither is too deep, she thinks, but it feels nice to have him care for them.

"What bothers me, though," he says thoughtfully, "is that this seems like just a feint."

She blinks. "What do you mean?"

He frowns. "This doesn't feel like they meant it seriously. They had to know there was a good chance you were listening, and a good chance that we'd figure it out. It's as if this were just a game to them."

"That's sick," she sputters. "What if we hadn't sorted it?"

"That's what they do for fun on this planet," he says, focusing his attention on her hands. His voice carries a reproof, but a gentle one. "Now do you see why I wanted you to stay on the TARDIS?"

Amy swallows hard. "I had a really, really good reason."

"Later," he says with a sigh. "Let's just focus on the problems at hand, okay?"

She nods.

.

.

.

He spends the night taking apart the sonic and building a secondary device that he can use to send out a signal to the ship. They both assume that the sonic will be removed sometime before their supposed execution in the morning, having served its entertainment purpose for their captors. They need a backup, something small, insignificant, and utterly disabling to the aliens.

"This might work," he says to her, exhausted, showing her the palm-sized device he's been building. "It's a stun grenade of sorts. When they come to execute us, they'll take us outside. This building is too heavily shielded, but out in the open I can use this to concuss them away from us for a few seconds and hopefully signal the TARDIS to transfer us up at the same time. It will only work if none of them are touching us at the exact moment of translation."

"It will work," she says.

"It had better," he replies. "You take it. Put it in your pocket. They're sure to search me in the morning."

In the morning they come to take them away, first having the foresight to remove the sonic, as expected, and then to club the Doctor semi-senseless before dragging them along to the coliseum where they will be lit up for all to see. The Doctor and his human, brought low.

At the execution grounds she really thinks they are done for, has a moment of despair. Back to back, tied against the pole with what seems to be more of the same explosives piled around their feet, the Doctor has regained consciousness but she is afraid their moment might have passed. She had managed to get the device into her hand as they were being tied, and she presses it into his palm now, meaningfully. He meets her eyes. Be ready, she can almost hear him thinking. Follow my lead.

He waits until the last possible minute, attempting to talk their way out of this by any means necessary – intimidating, cajoling, flattering. Nothing works. Finally, as the alien guards come towards them to trigger the explosion, he raises a hand just enough to activate the stun wave.

It goes very wrong.

Instead of knocking their guards off of their feet and away from them, the guards seem to dissolve in pain. One of them drops the lighted brand he was carrying and there's some kind of explosion that immediately engulfs two of the three. They get a brief look at the carnage before the Doctor grabs her and they dematerialize. Her last glimpse is of several of the creatures writhing in agony on the floor of the coliseum, burning alive. The smell – the smell is awful, and she knows it will stay with her for ages.

They rematerialize in the command room of the TARDIS.

"What happened? Why did they burn?" she asks, reeling.

"No time to explain," the Doctor says, his eyes shocked, typing quickly on the computer and adjusting various levers and dials. "Must get moving, right now. Here, hold this." He points her to a purple knob, and she does as he asks. Soon there is the familiar sound of the TARDIS taking flight, and they are gone. Safe at last.


	3. Chapter 3

Once they are sure of no pursuit, he stalks wordlessly off to god knows where, and Amy is left to wander, unsure of what to do. She washes up a bit, trying to get the smell out of her skin and clothes, and then makes her way to the library. She thinks about hunting him down but decides that he's more likely to find her when he's ready.

He does soon enough. He looks rangy and wiry and full of tightly controlled energy. She feels a bit like she's in a cage with a wild animal that might or might not bite. She scoots over to one end to make room for him on the couch, and he sits rigidly at the other end.

They blink at each other for a few beats, waiting to see who will start.

"So," he says quietly, "I'd like to hear that explanation."

"You first," she says. "What happened down there?"

He swallows deeply. "I got a setting wrong. It's not easy to assemble a device like that from nearly microscopic parts with only your bare hands. Made it less of a concussion wave and more of a, well, liquefying device."

"Liquefying?"

"To internal organs," he mutters.

"It's not your fault," she says. "They _were_ trying to kill us."

This statement clearly goes awry.

"I know it's not my fault," he says tightly. "I'm not the one who didn't do what she was supposed to do and got us locked up."

She blinks hard, blindsided. "Well, that's not completely fair," she begins. "You don't know what happened. And you probably would have ended up there anyways, since they seemed to be onto your little cat burglar mission right from the start."

"Well that may be true, but I would've gotten myself out of it if they didn't have you to hang over my head," he spits at her, then he stops himself abruptly. He stands and turns his back towards her. She seems him scrub a hand over his face, clearly trying to rein himself in.

"I'm sorry," he mutters. "This isn't what I intended to say."

Amy focuses on deep breathing herself, well aware of the spots of color in her cheeks and the warring desires to either hit him or cry.

He plops down heavily onto the couch again, as far from her as he can be, and clearly steels himself to show less emotion.

"You're right," he says, carefully controlled. "I don't know. So tell me. What happened?"

Amy stares at the fire, trying to find the right words. "I wasn't planning to leave the TARDIS. You have to understand that. I had no intention of following you. I was _doing_ something interesting."

He blinks at her, clearly not sure he even wants to know what that means. "And?"

"And then the alarm started to go off. You know, the pinkish one."

"The mauve alert."

"Riiiight. Mauve," she says. "I always forget that one. But I remembered you said it was serious, so I raced out to the console room and I couldn't read any of the warnings that were flashing on the screen because they were all in those curly, squiggly letters that you said the TARDIS can't translate. But there was a picture of what was outside the doors."

He gestures with just a hint of impatience. "And?"

"Well, actually," she says slowly, "it was you."

That gets his attention. His eyes snap to hers, searching for deception and finding none. Amy can feel the magnetic pull of the full Oncoming Storm mode, almost as if she's pinned to her seat by the weight of his scrutiny. She squares her shoulders and faces him back. She's Amy Pond, for heaven's sake, and she doesn't quake just because some Time Lord is giving her the third degree.

"I was most certainly not outside the TARDIS," he says evenly.

"Well, no, of course not. But it looked like you. Some of the details were off, I think, but I didn't see that at the time. And you were bleeding, a lot. Staggering around, calling for help, pounding on the door. And then you fell down on the ground and looked like you were having a seizure." Amy shudders. "I thought you were dying. You _looked_ like you were dying."

"There's no way I wouldn't have been able to get into the TARDIS, even with my head cut off," he points out helpfully.

"And I know this how?" she counters, a little heated.

"True," he says. "Never told you. How would you know? Must've been a perception filter or something. Or they photographed me and set up a hologram. Amazing that they could do it so fast…"

"Yeah, brilliant," she says bitterly.

He returns to the subject at hand with a look of apology. "So you went out to get me?"

"I tried," she says fiercely. "The TARDIS wouldn't let me out. Wouldn't open the doors. I'm banging and crying on one side trying to get to you and you're moaning and clattering on the other and every second that goes by, I'm sure you're nearly dead."

He leans towards her, eyes softening, and she can tell he feels her pain.

"What did you do?"

"Lost my marbles," she says quietly. "Threatened. Shouted. Had a bloody breakdown, told her if she didn't let me out she was going to have two comatose patients on her hand because I was going to beat myself bloody trying to get the bloody door open." She grimaces, sheepishly. "A few of my bruises might be from actually trying to prove that point. And finally the lock clicked open."

He sighs, eyes clocking the purpling bruises on her face and shoulders. "And when you went out, they took you."

"Yes." She looks down, embarrassed. "I'm a right idiot. I shouldn't have fallen for it. But I had to help you."

He pulls her towards him, snuggling her up with her head on his scratchy tweed shoulder. "Of course you did," he murmurs, leaning his head into hers. "You didn't know."

They stay like that for another hour, both exhausted, talking a little but mostly staring into the flames. When he looks down to check on her, he finds she's asleep. He stays in place, thinking, until his arm has long since gone numb beneath her back.

.

.

.

The next day he sits her down and begins the necessary explanations, things she needs to know, things that will make them both safer. Like how the TARDIS will always open for him, tools or not, perception filter or no – he and the TARDIS are bound on a quantum and cellular level and it is impossible for the TARDIS not to recognize him, conscious or unconscious, all in one piece or in a thousand. Amy hadn't known. He has never told her. He has never told her so many things, just assumed she already has the knowledge to back up the impressive amount of self-confidence she brings to their day to day lives.

Hard to remember she's only been with him for a couple of months. It feels much longer. She alternately makes his hearts lighter and gets completely under his skin in equal measure with the impact of someone he's known for years.

 _This lack of information changes now,_ he tells them both. He teaches her what button to push on the console to scan for creatures and atmospheric conditions outside the door. He explains some of the read outs and shows her the buttons or words to lock the console down and release it. He explains how to call him when he is off the box, and how to get the TARDIS to tell her where he is. He writes down a couple of symbols she might see on the screen in the worst of emergencies so she will know what is happening.

He considers telling her about the emergency homing programs that will return her home if he is ever killed, and decides that this subject, along with one or two others, can wait for another day.

Amy isn't exactly silent and serious through all of this instruction, but he can see she is absorbing knowledge as fast as he can give it. She's an apt pupil, with a way of restating things that brings them to a brilliant and often pithy point that he wishes he had thought of. She writes occasional reminders in a tiny little notebook that reminds him of the police tablet she carried when he first returned to Earth for her and found her grown.

That night they open the door, extend an atmosphere bubble, and stare out at a nebula on the edges of inhabitable space. They sit and talk long into the night, and he finds himself revealing more than he intended. He can't tell her all of his losses – no one, least of all him, can handle all of that in one dose, and in his darkest heart he knows he needs her worshipful view of him too much to risk its diminishment – but he tells her some of it. That his world was lost. About some of the people and places he misses. Some of the harms he has done.

She is quiet, looking into him with those eyes as still and deep as the moon, her hand in his. When he finishes, her head is leaning against his shoulder, her feet swinging out into the void.

"Well, Doctor," she says, her voice soft, "that's more than any one person should have to hold all alone." She reaches out and strokes his cheek, then takes his hand when he reaches for her and presses it against her heart. "I'll help you carry it. Just you and me."

And together, they watch the stars wink and burn, in the empty silence of space.


End file.
